Nikola woke about 3:00 am. Whatever else happened, he had decided he couldn't give up his experiments. Helen would forgive him eventually, she always did. He made phone calls while he dressed and went down to the subbasement. He quickly crated the remaining node components, tore the shielding off the walls and ceiling and boxed that too.
Nikola loaded as much as he could into one of the transport spheres and rode with it to a surface access point where he used his own personal codes to override the Sanctuary security system. By the time he arrived there were four men waiting for him with a large truck. They began loading boxes and crates while he took the sphere back for another load.
After the sixth and final load, Nikola gave the men instructions, reset the security system after they left, and took the sphere back to the Sanctuary. It was almost 8:00 am. He brushed off the front of his jacket and ran his hands through his hair. Arriving at the Sanctuary platform, he trotted down the steps, checked to make sure his tie was straight and settled his jacket.
He was standing with his hands on his hips, staring at the waterfall and looking bored when Will and Jenna arrived about 30 seconds later. Jenna was an Abnormal who looked like a slightly plump college student in her early twenties, dressed in jeans, trainers and a hoodie. Henry came behind toting three cages with netting, tape, and masks stuffed inside, while Will and Jenna carried rolls of a clear, thick, plastic-like material.
"There you are, finally. Do you know how long I've been waiting here?" Nikola asked grouchily. "If I have to get up early to go do this, the least you could do is be on time."
"Sorry" said Will, "We had to get the equipment. Do you know Jenna?"
"No, I haven't had that pleasure" Nikola said smoothly, walking over and giving her a smile, his eyes assessing her figure. To Will he said "Why is she here?"
"She's coming with. Her sense of smell is rather unusual. She enjoys eau de skunk and rotting fish, don't you Jenna?"
She giggled a little and said "Like, that's one of my favorites. Willy said he needed somebody to help with smelly kodors, so I volunteered. I've never smelled a kodor, but they sound fabulous."
"Oh Willy said that, did he? Willy, has she had any mission experience at all?"
Will kept a strained smile on his face. "This is her first collection mission. It should be good training for her, kodors aren't dangerous and if the smell becomes overpowering she'll still be able to function if your super vampire senses get too grossed out and you end up puking in a corner."
"Vampires only regurgitate when they choose to, Willy, unlike humans who . . ."
Henry had been piling the gear into the sphere and broke in. "Everything's loaded. I included gloves and three masks just in case even though Jenna probably won't need one. This plastic stuff is to wrap around the cages; it will let air in but keep most of the odor under control once you catch the kodors. You guys better get going, huh?"
Will said "Yeah, we don't want to keep the plane waiting." He escorted Jenna into the sphere and Nikola followed, surreptitiously checking the sphere for traces of his earlier trips. He couldn't spot anything so he relaxed and ignored Jenna chattering on in her excitement at her first mission.
Word of the mission flashed across the continent to Doctor Petrocelli. She could only smile; at last, things seemed to be going right. Tesla was coming with only two other people, and the kodors she had planted would be a good distraction. Still, there would be a great deal left to chance and it might end up in failure as other attempts had. But they just needed Tesla outside after dark; then the timing of the train was everything. It would be preferable if the others weren't around, but even if they were it would still be possible if everything went just right. If it didn't, then she would wait and try again.
The plane trip was uneventful. Jenna spent a lot of time looking out the window, Will played video games, and Nikola brooded. A van was waiting when the plane landed and once the gear was transferred Will drove them to a fast food place for lunch. He got a burger and fries, and Jenna got a burger that she doctored with some gray powder she carried in her purse, explaining that her sense of taste was like her sense of smell, and she just couldn't possibly eat regular food the way it was. Fortunately the powder had very little odor.
Nikola just rolled his eyes at the delay and waited impatiently, drumming his fingers. He doubted Helen would notice the missing crates from the subbasement before he got back, but he knew he'd be far better off if he explained before she discovered it; she would assume the worst of him, she always did. Although he wasn't all that sure what the explanation was going to be other than he just couldn't stand to see his rift node work destroyed, again.
Afterwards they drove to the warehouse. They could smell a peculiar odor a block away that grew more powerful as they approached. Nikola and Will both donned masks before they got out of the van.
Jenna took deep breaths and smiled. "Like wow. Sort of like fresh horse urine, rotting licorice, and something else, I'm not quite sure what, but don't worry, it'll come to me." Will and Nikola were united in hoping it didn't, the smell was bad enough in itself without an accompanying description.
The warehouse was large, but narrow and long. Will and Jenna unloaded the cages and netting while Nikola did a circuit to make sure all the doors and windows were securely closed. He returned looking paler than usual, and glad he hadn't had time for breakfast that morning. He was doing his best to focus on the work instead of the reek, but wasn't quite managing to block it out.
Will was looking slightly green and periodically had to step outside for a breath of less potent air in spite of the heavy duty masks they were wearing. It turned out they didn't have quite enough netting to channel the kodors into the cages without leaving any escape routes, so they had to move some boxes and sheets of plywood to cover the ends near the walls. Jenna fetched and carried and helped set up while poking fun at both of the men.
"Look at you guys, you both look like you're going to hurl at any second. It's just a little odor, and it's not even all that strong."
Will replied from inside his mask "That's easy for you to say, let me wave some perfume under your nose and see how you react. Anyway, if either of us is going to throw up it'll be him, not me."
Nikola wisely kept his mouth shut. Enough of the odor was making it through his mask without opening his mouth to taste it as well as smell it. He could slow, even stop his breathing for a while, but this was taking hours and he had to give his cells oxygen while he was doing physical work. He refused to give Will the satisfaction of seeing him retch, even if he had nothing in his stomach to disgorge.
It was late afternoon by the time they were ready. Nikola walked briskly to the far end of the warehouse and vamped. The mask wasn't designed to fit over fangs, but he was able to keep it in place and started growling and making a lot of noise. He moved back and forth in augmented rushes across the warehouse, banging boxes and crates as he passed and worked his way forward. The air in the back was far worse than the front, truly fetid with the creatures' trapped odor.
It didn't take too long before he started hearing skittering and scraping, and caught a glimpse of something dark brown and furry running between hiding places. He tried to keep all the sounds between himself and the cages, but he heard one or two go off to the side and back the way he had come. He kept driving the others.
Eventually five kodors broke from the last of the shelves and crates and ran across empty space to the barriers. They looked something like small beavers with short stubby tails and longer legs, and moved very fast. At the barriers they turned to run down along them and kept moving away from Nikola as much as possible right toward the cages. Four ran smoothly into the cages, one ran past, up the far barrier to the wall and back into the main part of the warehouse.
Nikola trotted up and gave Will the bad news. "There are two more, plus the one that got away. You'll need to move those four into one of the cages so we can do it again."
Will and Jenna put on heavy gloves, turned the cages with the doors facing up, and transferred two of the 25 to 30 pound kodors into a large cage with the two others. The kodors squealed and struggled a little, but didn't try to bite, and the cage was quite full when they were done. They moved it back out of the line up to the outer door to help dispel the odor a little.
They reset the remaining two empty cages and adjusted the netting and Nikola moved off to start at the rear again. The second drive successfully netted the remaining three; Nikola hadn't heard any slip past him this time. He went outside to get some less smelly air while Will and Jenna started wrapping the cages and taking down the netting. He'd had the worst of the smell and he'd been doing most of the exercising in it and needed a break; he was nauseated and close to embarrassing himself. He would never admit it of course, so he just said his job was done and let them think he was being arrogant or lazy.
Outside, the sun had gone down and it was very dark. There was one arc light by another distant warehouse, and lights off in the city, but only one bare bulb shone weakly outside where they had parked the van. Nikola walked a little way from the warehouse and took off his mask. The air was better outside; the odor was less concentrated but still present, and his stomach calmed.
Suddenly he heard a woman cry out "Help me! My foot is stuck, somebody help me!"
Still vamped, he could see a figure a short block away struggling on some railroad tracks. He began to trot in that direction. Then the red warning lights started flashing and the gates came down. He ran full out, augmenting his speed as much as he could.
When he reached her, he could see the bright light of the train coming, moving fast. The woman wasn't even at the crossing, but just off of it, and how on earth did she get her foot under the rail? He wondered if she was drunk as he worked to free her.
The vibration in the rail was very strong and he could hear the loud noise of the engine approaching. The engineer saw them and blew the whistle and Nikola heard the scream of the brakes, but he knew that much mass could never stop in time.
And then the struggling woman melted through his hands, and flowed down between the rails.
Nikola didn't understand what had happened, but now no one was in danger except him. He leapt in a desperate attempt to clear the engine. The whistle was screaming, the breaks were screaming, a brilliant white light surrounded him, and then there was only the terrible impact and blackness.
The train finally screeched to a stop and railroad personnel with flashlights climbed off and ran back down the track, but they found no trace of anyone under the wheels or nearby. They went out ahead of the engine and walked the tracks for hundreds of feet, but nothing; they could only conclude the people had dodged the train at the last second. Finally they re-boarded, called in the incident, and the train rumbled off.
Unseen, two black vans had waited, one on either side of the tracks. As soon as Nikola's body landed, the nearest had disgorged three people and a stretcher. He was loaded on and shoved into the van in seconds. Inside the van, his apparently lifeless body was securely strapped down with titanium webbing and he was given two injections. Everything was removed from his pockets and placed in a heavy leaded box.
Under the train something flowed over the rail between the train's wheels as soon as they halted and a woman rose up out of seemingly nothing alongside the train. She walked away and got into the other van long before the railroad personnel reached the area. Both vans drove sedately away, carefully obeying all the traffic laws. Doctor Petrocelli would be pleased, the mission had been a complete success.
Will and Jenna redistributed the kodors among the three cages to give them all as much space as possible. The soft thick plastic had to be positioned so one layer covered every outer cage surface including the floor, and tape it in place. It was a struggle, and they soon realized they should have wrapped the cages before they were full of kodors. By the time they had it done Will was swearing under his breath and swearing he was going to repay Nikola somehow for walking out and leaving the most difficult part of the job to them.
They finally got all three cages wrapped and together carried each one out to the van, and went back and got the netting. Will assumed that when the work was done and they were ready to leave Nikola would reappear, but he didn't. Where had he wandered off to?
He and Jenna got flashlights from the van and walked around the area calling for him. Will tried calling his cell phone, but got no connection. The only thing they found was Nikola's mask, lying near the road some twenty feet from the warehouse. Eventually they got in their van and drove down the road slowly, over the tracks and beyond, but saw no sign of him nor anywhere he might have been likely to go.
"This is nuts" said Will. "Why would he just leave?"
Jenna said impatiently "I don't know. How long are we going to drive around looking for him? I mean, we've been out here a half an hour, if he wanted to be found we would have found him, right?"
"Maybe, but Magnus is not going to like it if we come home without him."
"Well, like, he's a big boy; he can come back on his own if he wants to, can't he?"
"I guess. Being a vampire nothing much could have happened to him. Maybe he's already at the plane waiting for us."
But Nikola wasn't at the plane, so Will and Jenna loaded the kodors with the help of the crew. Will poked around and delayed another half hour, but still no Nikola. He tried Nikola's cell again with no success, gave up, boarded, and ordered the plane to take off.
It was early morning by the time they got back to the Sanctuary. Will went to Helen's office, but she wasn't there yet. He went to her suite and stood outside the door. He hated to wake her up if she was still sleeping, but she wouldn't thank him for delaying. He knocked loudly.
He heard her call "coming", and in a few seconds she appeared at the door. She was in a dressing gown and her hair was mussed and she did not look happy.
"Will, what is it? This had better be important, I was having a lovely dream."
"We have the kodors, but we lost Nikola."
Helen paled. "You lost him? You mean he's . . . "
"No, no, he's not dead, he's just missing."
"How does one lose a vampire?" she asked caustically.
"We had the kodors in cages and he went outside to get some air while Jenna and I packed up. When we went out to load the van, he was gone."
"So you just left without him."
"No, we looked for him. We walked around and called, but he didn't answer. I tried his cell phone but it wasn't working or something. We found his mask by the road, so we drove around looking for him too, but no Nikola."
"That's most peculiar. I'm going to want to go over this with both of you in detail. I'll meet you in my office, twenty minutes."
Will went to get coffee and tell Jenna. They were waiting when Helen arrived, dressed with her hair neatly arranged. Henry arrived with her.
Helen sat down at her desk and said "Now, tell me everything from the beginning. I want every detail, even as much as you can remember of what was said."
Will and Jenna told her everything they could over and over for an hour and a half. Finally Helen said "Enough. There's nothing, no reason." She sat staring down at her desk for a little while, then her head snapped up.
"Henry, the crates with the rift node modules, are they still downstairs?"
"I don't know. I was detaching all the shielding connectors yesterday. Nikola must have been really mad to just rip the shielding off the walls like that. I didn't go look for the rest of the stuff."
"You mean none of the components were still in the room?"
"No, but I figured Nikola just worked late through the night and stowed everything himself. He does that sort of thing a lot."
"Go look, right now. Jenna, thank you for your help, we won't keep you."
Jenna got up and said "Okay, I'm glad to help, you know? Hey, is there any chance I could get one of those kodors for a pet? I'd, like, take real good care of it."
"No, they are wild animals. But if you would like, Will could assign you to be their caretaker until we have had a chance to examine them. If they are healthy they will be returned to their natural habitat. If not, you could work with them until they are or take permanent charge of any of them that we need to keep."
"Cool. I hope they're all okay, but if any of them aren't, well, you know, that would be all right, I'd nurse them back to health or whatever." Jenna bounced happily out the door. A moment later Henry charged back in.
"It's gone; every scrap, even the shielding. I looked all over."
Helen looked angry. "Check the security logs" she said tersely.
Henry tapped quickly on his laptop and said "Between three and eight yesterday morning security at one entrance was completely disabled, and it was done with Tesla's security code."
Will put his head in his hands and said "Oh god, here we go again."
Helen sat slumped. "Well, that explains where Nikola went, doesn't it?"
Henry was still working at his laptop. "Yep, I've got images of him taking the crates via the spheres, but he blacked out the camera at the entrance so I've got zip as far as what he did with them."
Will said thoughtfully. "Where would he go? Of course: the one place we can't reach him, the underground vampire colony. He'd feel safe there, and you said they have science labs so he'd have equipment to work with."
Helen didn't look so sure. "I don't know, it seems too obvious. But send out an immediate alert to all Sanctuary personnel in Hungary and Romania to be on the watch for him. He should be easy to spot with a truckload of crates and boxes. Tell them not to try to stop him though, I don't want anyone hurt. Just alert us and follow him as far as they safely can."
She continued "Henry, check for local truck rentals. He would have had accomplices since he didn't drive the truck himself, but we can track who ever rented a large enough truck to carry the node. Also check Nikola's favorite hotels. I doubt he has registered at any of them, but his long term residences would likely store some boxes for him if he asked."
Will got on a laptop too. "His Sanctuary accounts have less than a thousand dollars in them. He's been moving funds out regularly; I'll try to track his accounts and freeze them."
Helen shook her head. "No, track but don't freeze his money; if we watch for withdrawals, we may be able to get an idea of his location. Henry, can you track his cell phone?"
"Nope, already tried that, I'm getting nada. He hasn't used his credit cards since he disappeared either."
"Keep looking. I'll check his suite. It wouldn't be like him to leave clues around, but if he was in a hurry he might have overlooked something." Helen left Will and Henry to their computer searches.
The connecting door between her suite and Nikola's stood open as it usually did. Helen went to his bedroom and looked through the closets, drawers, and bathroom. There was nothing missing, not even his toothbrush or medication. He hadn't packed any clothes, either, which made her lean more toward the idea he had fled to the vampires. He had clothes there and didn't need his medication; among vampires he could be as vampire as he liked with no danger.
What bothered her about the idea was that he knew there were Sanctuary personnel in the area, and he couldn't very well sneak past them with a truck load of crates. He himself had given her a vampire society "free human" symbol and a handful more for any humans who needed to go underground and visit there. So he could be pursued there, and the Sanctuary had far better weapons than the vampires did. Would he really go there knowing it could cause an all-out war? Helen didn't think he would; at least she hoped he had thought that far ahead.
He hadn't left her a note either. That truly bothered her. It was their first fight since they had become a couple, but for him to run away without a word . . . that just wasn't like Nikola at all. Sneaking out the node, that she understood, he had done that so she couldn't stop him. But she would have expected him to make a loud announcement about his reasons for leaving and march out in a huff, not just disappear and leave her to worry about him. Although there was nothing unusual about him being utterly thoughtless sometimes, that was usually just when he was wound up in a project. Still, they had been so close these last months she just couldn't accept that he would be so unkind as to disappear without a word, without a trace.
When she went back to her office Will just said "Switzerland and the Cayman Islands." So the money trail ended. Henry hadn't found any big truck rentals in the area in a week, or even two smaller truck rentals together. He was still working on hotels, but Helen didn't hold out any real hope for that avenue. If Nikola had money they couldn't trace he would more likely just rent a storage facility somewhere.
So unless he turned up at the vampire colony they weren't going to find him any time soon. Helen had Will put out a general alert to all Sanctuary operatives; there was nothing else she could do, until and unless he chose to contact them.
/
The man had been well paid to drive his semi for eight hours until he reached the designated airport. Someone was waiting for him there, and he and his brothers unloaded the crates on to large rolling platforms. The crates were marked and wheeled out to the aircraft that would transport them across the Atlantic.
At Heathrow the crates were transferred to another plane that took them east, out of Europe and into Asia where they were loaded on to two old trucks and driven far into the countryside. The crates were unloaded into a barn of sorts, and left there.
/
The black vans didn't have that far to go, only just under a three hour drive. They drove directly into the facility garage and the outer door was closed before Nikola was unloaded. He was trundled to the laboratory where Doctor Petrocelli waited.
She took off his coat and vest and examined him. His heart was still not beating so the injections he had been given would be ineffective. There was obviously a lot of damage not yet healed so she had time. She took all the fluid samples she could get from him for analysis and set up an IV to start automatically as soon as his blood began to flow. Then she strapped him to a metal table with titanium webbing. Straps went around his wrists and ankles, above his knees and elbows, across his hips and chest, and around his neck. She left off the head band for now.
Unfortunately, she anticipated the initial sessions would be unpleasant. The IV held her own concoction designed to block Nikola's electromagnetic abilities. That was important, she certainly didn't want her metal instruments turned against her, so she would ensure a more than sufficient dosage, along with a mild sedative. The webbing would hold against vampire strength, but it would be easier if he was calm.
Once he was awake, she would start the psychedelics. While she had no need to change his DNA at all, achieving mental control was going to be a challenge. Ashley had been strong-willed, but young. Nikola- Nick she would call him- was older than any subject she had ever worked on. Her advantage was that he had been famous and she had read books about him so she knew a great deal about his early history. Along with the drugs, she would use that knowledge to turn him into her willing instrument.
This time she would be fully successful, there was no need to rush; she could take all the time in the world. No one knew where he was or even that he had been kidnapped, and her spies at the Sanctuary reported that everyone there thought he had taken some experiment and run off on his own, so they wouldn't be looking for her at all. And of course they would never find him here in her facility when they had no clue it even existed. This operation was going even better than she had hoped.
The plan was delicious. Nick didn't need to be able to teleport like her previous subjects; he would just walk into the Sanctuary under her instructions. He would make up his quarrel with Doctor Helen Magnus, and when they were alone he would kill her, slowly and painfully, and make her fully aware that it was the Cabal that was doing it. He would watch himself kill her from inside his own head and be totally unable to stop himself. Afterward, Nick would kill as many other Sanctuary personnel as possible before he was killed or took his own life. The Cabal would be avenged.
A/N: Nubbin 7 and Lorienleaf, thank you so much for your reviews. It really encourages me when folks let me know they are enjoying my work.
